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For many years, I've shared my blogging tips and tricks as its own series on this blog. There were many reasons why I did this, with the biggest being that I simply disliked a lot of the information that was out there for travel bloggers and wanted to provide my own insight from my decade-plus experience running this site.

Recently I got an opportunity to take this knowledge in a new direction, and I am happy to announce a free weekly newsletter to help bloggers out- This Week in Blogging!

We've been fans of Managed WordPress hosting for many years now and finally decided to change our host to BigScoots as a cost-saving measure. We had heard about this one for quite some time (all good things, naturally), and finally took the leap in early 2020 in order to see what they were all about.

In the past, I've written reviews of travel conferences and networking events like TBEX, Travelcon, NATJA, and IMM– a few of which I've had in regular rotation for a while. As it has been my goal to broaden my networking horizons, I'm starting to attend more conferences/events beyond these as well.

One of my recent additions was MATPRA (the Mid-Atlantic Tourism Public Relations Alliance) Media Marketplace. MATPRA is a consortium of tourist boards from the mid-Atlantic, namely within Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington DC, and West Virginia, that comes together for a networking opportunity (the Media Marketplace) for writers and CVBs to meet and discuss publication opportunities.

So, is this one worth it? My short answer is yes. But my long answer would be with a caveat that it depends on where you are coming from and what you want to get out of it.

*Note: Unlike other event reviews, I forgot to take photos at the Marketplace proper (I was too busy networking, whoops). Instead, photos of this one come from the FAM experiences that coincide with MATPRA Media Marketplace.

I'm not going to lie, I joined NATJA primarily because their 2019 conference was located within driving distance from me- not because of the organization, not because of any other member benefits, it was purely out of the convenience I have in getting to Syracuse (2019's host city).

My decision to do this came in 2018 when I quit my job to blog full-time. Around that time I made a conscious decision to start attending new conferences, because at a certain point if I want to grow I need to get outside of my comfort/knowledge zone to learn new topics and meet new people. (I like conferences like TBEX and Travelcon just fine, but I found myself only attending these for the networking opportunities- not the sessions.)

As such, I figured it was time to broaden my horizons when it came to conferences to see if I could get more out of the industry at large. The first was IMM in NYC, and now NATJA (the North American Travel Journalists Association) for their annual conference.

While I did not get anything at all out of the sessions (sadly), I have to say, it was a pretty nice trip all the same.